Saturday, October 06, 2007

This blogger is officially inundated. Please don't take it personally if your comment has not been moderated yet.

One quick point of interest. One reader pointed me here (link), and asked for my reaction. Aside from the rather obvious "Mary cannot hear you, she doesn't speak Latin or English, and she's with the Lord, while her body remains in the grave," there's little to say that has not already been said by "Josh" in the comments section of that post.

Some of the metaphors are more of a stretch than others, and the Ezekiel metaphor is practically obscene in context (take my word for it, or disgust yourself). As Josh aptly notes, some of the metaphors ought to point to Christ, not Mary. In any event, the blessed mother of our Lord was the recipient of grace not reward.

Matt submitted the following comment:My oh my is the point of the hymn missed in the criticism. The reason that Catholics, Orthodox, and the Church Fathers to whom both groups find recourse, saw all these as types of the Blessed Mother is that they show a thing in Scripture that held the presence of God, but was not consumed.

There is no debating that the Theotokos was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, the presence of God Himself, and that what was planted in her womb was the Word of God, equally God's presence, that there took on flesh from her.

That being the case, it seems not much of a stretch to look at other things that contained the awful presence of the Undivided Trinity and yet were not consumed as being precursors of the most important created thing that fulfilled this function.

That's just a note on emphasis that I think was missed here.

As another aside, the typology of Our Blessed Mother in the OT, particularly as relates to the Ark of the Covenant is incredibly telling.

In the account of David recovering the Ark from the Philistines, we see David bringing the Ark from the enemies of God to the hill country of Judea for forty days. Upon seeing the Ark, David exclaims "What have I done that the Ark of my Lord should come to me?"

In the account of the Visitation we see Mary, the new Ark, going to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea for forty days (the presence of the Living God, which had been absent from Israel for so long is contained in her womb). Upon her arrival, Elizabeth exclaims to Mary "What have i done that the Mother of My Lord should come to me?"

There are no coincidences in Scripture. If one thing points to another, we should be ready and willing to acknowledge it. There is no way to explain away this connection while claiming to be intellectually honest with the content of Sacred Scripture.

Please note that I've removed your comment under your own name because you have selected a profile image that violates the second commandment, and that would show up on certain screens if your comment stayed posted.

Please consider using something else as your profile image.

As to your comments, there was nothing especially miraculous about Mary not being consumed by Incarnate Jesus - Incarnate Jesus didn't consume anyone who was in his presence.

Accordingly, that justification for any of the metaphors is bizarre.

Furthermore, the claim that "there are no coincidences in Scripture" may be true, but yet David's comment was one of fear, whereas Elizabeth's was one of rejoicing - and of course - the "____ come to me" part is really the only direct verbal parallel, for David asks "how shall ____ come to me," and Elizabeth asks "whence is this that _____ should come to me."

Accordingly, there is no reason for supposing that there was some non-coincidental parallel between the two texts.

Your objection proves too much! Of course the Incarnate Christ did not consume anyone in His presence. But the Incarnate Christ was not what was contained in the womb of the Theotokos, neither was it the Incarnate Christ that overshadowed her.

It was the pure Spirit of God which no mortal can even see, much less be overshadowed by or contain within their person, without being destroyed.

As to the typology of the Visitation, I guess it seems so incredibly obvious to me, and did even when I was a protestant, that I have a hard time seeing how you could deny it.

Sure, one was from fear and one was from joy, but that's the nature of the Comings of God in the OT and the Coming of God in the NT. Obviously, touching the Ark would kill you, touching the Theotokos would not. God's presence was a fearsome firey mountain or a pillar of fire in the OT, a newborn babe in the Incarnation. The difference in responses is proportionate to the difference in the nature of the presence.

But beyond that, these are the consistent interpretations of the Scriptures from the earliest times. Even the first generations of protestant revolutionaries like Luther and Calvin held a proper veneration for the Theotokos and to the interpretations of the Fathers. Neither Luther nor Calvin would have suffered the impious attacks of protestants against the Perpetual Virginity or high place of honor due to the Theotokos.

And I'm sorry, but I will not change my avatar but out of deference to your views, I will post anonymously. Out of curiosity, how, considering your iconoclastic position, how do you understand things like Mel Gibson's Passion film? I ask out of sincere curiosity, not to pick a fight.

Dear Matt:You wrote: "the Incarnate Christ was not what was contained in the womb of the Theotokos"

I respectfully disagree. That's exactly who was in Mary's womb.

The overshadowing was by the Holy Spirit - no question there, but don't conflate the persons of the Trinity.

Overshadowing by the Spirit brings protection not destruction. God protected Mary's pregnancy. Nevertheless, the Spirit of God is omnipresent: uncontainable. If you will go to hell, you will find him there also.

The "it seems obvious" argument is not much of a response to the demonstrated grammatical dissimilarities.

If Luther and Calvin properly "venerated" Mary, then modern Roman Catholics do not. One thing you can be sure: Luther and Calvin were not sitting around muttering through Rosaries towards the conclusions of their respective ministries.

I'm glad you posted anonymously to prevent the same problem from reoccuring - but I still exhort you to reconsider your continued violation of the second commandment.

The Godhead is not to be worshipped with the works of man's hands, as though he needed anything.

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